Natural gas prices rose Tuesday on expectations that a heat wave would increase demand for natural gas as a power-generation fuel. Summer heat increases demand for air conditioning, leading to higher consumption of gas-powered electricity. Prices have declined in recent weeks as traders looked past summer to fall, when demand typically eases as the weather moderates. But a bout of “highly anomalous late summer heat” is forecast to spread across the eastern and southern U.S. in the next six to 10 days, said forecaster WSI Corp. on Tuesday. Futures for October delivery settled up 1.3 cents, or 0.5%, at $2.702 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. “Prices are slightly higher as the heat wave engulfs major parts of the country,” Dominick Chirichella, analyst at the Energy Management Institute, said in a note. However, he added, “the market is not overly excited as the […]